UFC 102 Primer

Following record business for UFC 100 and 101, what can the world’s
leading fight promotion do for a late-season encore?

Visit Portland, Oregon.

Yes.

Having exhausted three of five titleholders in its previous two
summer shows (four, if you count Anderson
Silva’s pillaging of Forrest
Griffin) the only gold up for grabs is what you find during a
prospecting trip: UFC
102 will have to make do with bouts that have consequences only
for contenders -- and the highly manipulative tactic of using
Oregonian Randy
Couture as a feature attraction.

Why You Should Care: Because the
bewildering spectacle of watching a middle-aged Couture out-hustle
the proverbial kids on the porch never gets old; because Demian
Maia’s jiu-jitsu is performance art; because Brandon Vera
needs a strong showing against Krzysztof
Soszynski to remain relevant; because Soszynski needs the
winner’s purse to buy some vowels; and because Chris Leben
continues to make some very unfortunate hairstyle choices.

Fight of the Night: Maia/Nate
Marquardt, with Marquardt’s video game stand-up pitted against
Maia’s very violent game of Twister.

Sleeper Fight of the Night:Nick Catone
vs. Mark
Munoz, a scramble that should benefit from their relative
inexperience. (Experienced can mean defensive, and defensive can
mean boring.)

Pre-Emptive Complaint: The idea that
freshly defeated Keith
Jardine and Thiago
Silva can take co-main precedence over Maia/Marquardt.

Hype Quote of the Show: “Antonio is one
of the most dynamic submission fighters in our sport. He is very
tenacious and durable. I have studied and admired many of his
fights and even sported the Anaconda choke in the [Mike] Van
Arsdale fight after watching him pull it off.” -- Couture buttering
Nogueira like a croissant on UFC.com.